Cold War Missiles Target of Blackout

[cal04]

Documents Altered To Conceal Data
The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive. The archive is a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University.

"It would be difficult to find more dramatic examples of unjustifiable secrecy than these decisions to classify the numbers of U.S. strategic weapons," wrote William Burr, a senior analyst at the archive who compiled the report. " . . . The Pentagon is now trying to keep secret numbers of strategic weapons that have never been classified before."

The report comes at a time when the Bush administration's penchant for government secrecy has troubled researchers and bred controversy over agency efforts to withhold even seemingly innocuous information. The National Archives was embroiled in scandal during the spring when it was disclosed that the agency had for years kept secret a reclassification program under which the CIA, the Air Force and other agencies removed thousands of records from public shelves.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/20/AR2006082000625.html

[ShockediSay]

1. private secret police; secret govt programs; unconstitutional search

& seizure; those who are not with us (voting or otherwise) are agin' us; mess with us and you're on a road to nowhere and no one will ever hear from you again

[KoKo]

2. Um....our tax dollars paid for this stuff. We the People own them and We

want an accountability RIGHT NOW! The hell with your secrecy ...we pay your Damned Salaries...Who the Hell ARE YOU?

[Up2Late]

3. And don't forget, it costs extra to Classify old crap like this too!

Every time they reclassify this stuff, they are adding to the storage cost for this old info.:banghead:

[tuvor]

4. Don't the internets render this kind of futile?

Or have these heretofore public documents never been made available online?

I can't imagine that all of this information isn't already on a lot of hard drives.

[YankeyMCC]

5. Weapons counts now confidential

(snip)
The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information the government long provided even to its enemies: the numbers of weapons in the US nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.
(snip)

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/08/21/weapons_counts_now_confidential/

More attempts to rewrite history.

[Demeter]

6. I Have Suspicions....

is this number being classified because it's being changed? Have these items been sold or given to some other powers or powers-to-be? Israel, Turkey, or god forbid Khazakstan, Pakistan, India?

Or is it because they've been used--clandestinely, in some part of our dirty little war programs, or maybe to set up another 9/11 for use in the upcoming midterm elections?

It's a damn-fool stunt; and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice are just the fools to do it.


Another alternative--they just did an inventory, and found out that the numbers were totally bogus, and are covering up Reagan/Bush era corruption. Because you and I both know, if things went missing during Clinton, they would have screamed bloody murder---unless they were saving it for a Hillary Presidential run!

It's a shame to be so cynical so young.